On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 23:57:35 +0100, Richard Atterer wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I can confirm this on an EeePC 1008HA, running a vanilla 2.6.33-rc6 kernel
> and xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.9.1-2. It seems to be caused by KMS:
>
> http://wiki.debian.org/KernelModesetting
> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25681
>
> >From the moment the X server starts, the console becomes inaccessible, with
> corrupt output being shown when I switch there. For example, I can still
> see the cursor blinking, but that blinking happens for a couple of pixels
> spread all over parts of the screen. I use GRUB_GFXMODE=800x600 in
> /etc/default/grub for a VESA fb console -
> http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Intel_GMA#Kernel_Modesetting says that this
> is a bad idea...
>
> A possible temporary fix might be to disable KMS, by passing i915.modeset=0
> to the kernel.
>
> For the record, the rest is exactly the same as in the original bug report:
> Occasional (every 30 sec?) flickering/tearing of the screen, as if the
> start of the video RAM were wrong for a frame or less. Eventually (after
> maybe 20 minutes use on average), the screen will go all black or grey.
> Suspend to RAM and resume is the only way to fix it, switching to the
> console and back won't do. Before the last upgrade, everything worked just
> fine.
>
Is this on 945GM? If so, it can be worked around by passing
i915.powersave=0 to the kernel, and was fixed for me by
http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/intel-gfx/2010-February/005763.html
Note that the debian kernel defaults to i915.powersave=0 so shouldn't be
affected by this bug anymore.
Cheers,
Julien